Adjacent
by 3rdTimeIsACharm
Summary: Rose and Scorpius explore the question of, "Is flirting just a means to an end, or can flirting be its own end?" Rating is for mentions of adult themes, and a potential second chapter.


I'm not making any money from this and ofc all intellectual property belongs to JKR.

* * *

He showed up in her life again 3 years after Hogwarts. She and her cousin Dominique had joined a local Quidditch team made up of mostly young twenty-somethings who were looking to be active and to socialize after work.

It was a Tuesday, and Rose had arrived first and was shooting the breeze with her teammates before practice started when Dominique and her coworker Apparated in with a _pop_. When they waltzed – or rather, when Dominique waltzed up to Rose, with her coworker trailing behind, Rose realized with a start that said coworker was _Scorpius Malfoy_.

Despite their parents' infamous feud, she and Scorpius had stayed out of each other's ways at Hogwarts. He had always seemed to her a well-mannered, quiet person who mostly kept to his close circle of friends. She, meanwhile, had followed in her mother's footsteps and developed niche academic interests early on and could mostly be found holed up in the library.

Neither had been particularly competitive on the Quidditch pitch in school. However, after graduating, Rose quickly got bored with the routine 9-to-5 of her new internship, and complained to Dominique that she was bored and restless most nights. In response, Dominique had suggested to Rose that she join the casual Quidditch league that she, Dominique, had previously joined. Starting up was relatively easy; although she hadn't played in school, Rose had grown up around enough Quidditch types to know her way around a broom and a ball. As she came out to more practices, she got to be closer friends with her teammates, and the activity satisfied her dual needs for socializing and exercising.

So when Scorpius showed up to practice for the first time, Rose just greeted him politely, asked about his day, and raised an eyebrow at Dominique promising to ask her about this later.

* * *

The next time Rose managed to get Dominique alone was for tea before a Weasley family gathering almost two months later. In the interim, Scorpius had continued to come to practice regularly. Although enthusiastic about and reasonably competent at the sport, he wasn't particularly social with the rest of the team, and hung primarily around Dominique during rest and after practice. With Dominique, however, he was animated and laughed a lot, which naturally prompted gossip between Rose and Astrid Leong, her other best friend on the team, about whether or not those two were secretly dating and keeping it from the team.

Dominique had already explained to Rose and Astrid over drinks one night that she had recruited generally at her workplace, and only Scorpius had said yes, for reasons he didn't explain to her. They hadn't pried more that evening, instead opting to ask Astrid more about her impending nupitals.

So it's the first thing on Rose's agenda, after they laugh about the crazies who tried to sell Dominique decidedly illegal potions intended to boost her sex appeal near the Apparition point. Like, have they _seen_ her?

"Well?" Rose begins with no other preamble. "Scorpius."

Dominique rolls her eyes, but doesn't say anything. It's her way of saying, "You're going to have to be more specific than that."

After a brief moment of internal debate, Rose goes with the blunt force question. "Are you guys dating?"

Dominique laughs. "No! You and I have known each other our entire lives, Rose, and sometimes I wonder if you even know me at all!"

Rose looks a little sheepish, and holds her hands up, palms out, in a peace gesture. "Sorry! But you know me, I see relationships everywhere! And Scorpius is just so much more friendly with you than with anyone else on the team!"

"That's just how he is," Dominique laughs. "It takes him a while to warm up to new people, but once he does, he's a great guy."

* * *

True to Dominique's prediction, Scorpius started to join team dinners after practice and make other friends. When it came to be Rose's turn, one of the things she noticed was that his eyebrows were probably the most expressive part of his face, and they would often convey entire conversations when he made long, intense eye contact with Rose. At first, Rose thought nothing of these moments and merrily went along her way.

It wasn't until almost six months later that Rose's perception of him started to change.

Rose was waiting up for Scorpius while he got changed, and was holding his broom. When he emerged, and she held out his broom for him, Scorpius grabbed not just his broom, but also her fingers, and proceeded to hold them for several seconds longer than necessary. Scorpius' eyes found hers, and held them for one smoldering moment while Rose started to feel her face heat up. He started to walk away first, but turned around to meet her eyes, and raise one perfect eyebrow.

A thought came unbidden to her in that one electric moment: This is someone who I'd like to kiss.

The thought shocked Rose, as crushes for her had always previously manifested as wanting to be with a person in their entirety. Desiring solely a physical relationship was new for her, but before the concept could overwhelm her, she shoved it to the side so she could focus on just Quidditch for the next hour and a half.

* * *

Rose had very little time to think about Scorpius – she fell asleep as soon as her head hit her pillow after washing up after practice, and she woke up running late for work. Her morning was subsequently spent running around like a chicken with its head cut off, and when she finally had a chance to sit down and think about lunch, she found a note waiting at her desk. It was addressed to her in unfamiliar handwriting, and upon opening it, a card with a calico kitten riding zooming around on a small broomstick slid out.

Inside was written, "Saw this and thought of you, -S."

Ignoring the rush of blood to her face, she stuck it to her mood board and sent back a quick response: a rough sketch of herself laughing, and a note saying, "Wow, my abs are really sore today. How are you?"

At the moment she was sending her owl off with a fond look on her face, her friend Alice Longbottom poked her head in to ask about lunch. And when Rose turned around to see Alice in her doorway with a little smirk on her face, she sighed and picked up her coat to head out for lunch and gossip.

"There's really not that much to tell," Rose grumbled to Alice, attempting to pre-empt the questioning she knew was coming. "He's Dominique's coworker, and she brought him out to Quidditch practice a little while ago, and now we're friends."

"Uh huh. I believe that. You were wearing a rather smitten expression when you sent off that owl… So something more must have happened."

"Okay, he sent me a card. There was a kitten playing Quidditch and he'd written that he saw it and made him think of me. It's the first time we've talked, or written, outside of practice."

"And what prompted this? Surely it wasn't totally out of the blue."

"Would it be so unbelievable if it was?" Rose pouted.

"With you, yes."

"Agh. I hate that you know me so well."

"No, you don't. You love me."

"Yeah, yeah, okay, you're always right."

"I love you too! Now enough dithering, spill the beans."

"Okay last night at practice," Rose began, only to be cut off.

"Only last night? Dayum this boy does not play around."

"Are you going to let me finish?"

Alice just batted her eyelashes coquettishly at Rose.

"Look, I think it was nothing," Rose tried again.

"Nothing? And then he just slides into your DMs just like that immediately after?"

"Alice! Jeez. He, like, held my hand?"

"Rose! Are you a hormonal teenager or are you a grown ass woman?"

"I'm telling you what happened! I was giving him his broom and instead of just taking it from a part that I wasn't holding like a normal person, he stood there holding my hand for like, five seconds! And he did his usual intense eye contact and eyebrow wiggle."

"Rose. This is nowhere near juicy enough to merit that silly smitten expression you were wearing when I found you earlier."

Nothing from Rose, just sullen silence.

"So, what are you planning to do about it? And don't say nothing."

Rose, who had definitely just been about to say, "Nothing," closed her mouth and tried to formulate a better response.

"What's wrong with nothing? I don't think I'd want to date him, and what's wrong with a little harmless flirting with a friend?"

* * *

"A little harmless flirting," for the next month, entailed sending each other jokes, photos, trinkets, and light banter at all hours. It got to the point where owls were too inconvenient, so they charmed matching pieces of parchment to transmit messages instantaneously.

Their sexual tension was at its peak, when Rose finally confessed to Alice that she'd been fantasizing about casual sex with Scorpius.

"So why don't you just ask him?"

"I don't want to break whatever friendship we have going on, or cause drama on the team, or," Rose stopped in her automatic answer of Alice's question. "Wait. Does that actually work? You just walk up to someone and say, 'Do you want to have sex with me?'"

"It's worked for me in the past," Alice said with a shrug.

Rose was boggled into silence.

"But what if," Rose attempted to form a coherent question.

"Then you, as a grown ass and extremely mature woman, get a move on with your life."

"Okay, but..."

"Look, if you want to do it the hard way, you could ask him if he's seeing anyone right now just to get a sense of whether or not you should bother continuing to pursue or not."

Surprisingly, this was remarkably easy to accomplish. During one of their lighthearted back-and-forths, Rose was easily able to slide in, "Are you and Dominique dating?"

"No," came the response. "But I am seeing someone else."

Crestfallen, Rose flopped down on her bed and sighed deeply at the ceiling, taking a moment to collect herself before rearranging all of her feelings about Scorpius. But it wasn't a minute before a new note came through from him.

A photograph, on the back written, "Coach asked me to distribute these team photos from our match last weekend."

It was a photo that Rose remembered well. In it, all their teammates have their arms slung around each other, but Rose and Scorpius in particular are next to each other, her arm around his waist, and his hand perhaps drifting inappropriately high on hers.

This really isn't helping.

* * *

The next weekend, their Quidditch club is headed out for an away tournament. Rather than Apparating straight to the site, Rose, Dominique, Scorpius, and some others opted to take a train up, for a more leisurely sightseeing trip through the countryside. At this time, Rose is not completely resolved on her feelings about continued flirting with Scorpius. He's acting as if nothing is changed, but then again, for him, nothing really has changed. It's Rose who received new information, and if Scorpius is going to continue being flirty and affectionate, and at this point in her life, if she's just looking for that kind of attention, why stop?

The team members who opted to take the train all decide to crowd into the same car, and whatever this new magnetism between Rose and Scorpius gets them wedged into a corner together. Girlfriend or no, there's the same electricity every time Rose touches him, and there's a lot of being pressed up against each other's side. He's warm and solid and it's easy to imagine that it means nothing when there's so many people jammed together in the space. But as the lunch hour approaches, and their teammates start drifting away in search of the dining car, and space opens up, neither of them move. There's space on both sides of them, so either could be the first to initiate the space.

But they remain pressed together in their playful banter and occasional landscape photography. They're putting together a collection of landscapes in motion, with a camera that's been charmed to stay level with the outside, rather than inside of the rattling train.

At the tournament site, the group is staying overnight for the multi-day tournament. The team has collected a couple of magically expanded tents, and as the group is separating into rooms and divvying up bunks, Rose is studiously avoiding eye contact with Scorpius, but somehow they end up in the top and bottom bunk from each other, with Dominique and Astrid in the bunk across.

As they get settled in for the night, Rose and Scorpius are doing their usual passing of notes, with the occasional cackle from one or the other of them that prompts Astrid to ask, "Are you two passing notes when you're right next to each other?"

"Of course not! I don't know what he's laughing about, but it's definitely unrelated. He might be going a little batty."

The first day of playing Quidditch goes better than expected, and after dinner, the group settles in for some board games before turning in. They end the night by playing a muggle game, One Night Werewolf, with Rose and Scorpius sitting next to each other leaning against Rose's bunk. She can feel his body heat radiating off of him, and it's making her twitchy. She's tapping her fingers incessantly against her thigh, the one that's in contact with his. He reaches over to still her fingers, meets her eyes, and asks very quietly, "What?"

She tugs her fingers back into her own possession, and gives a brief shake of her head. "Nothing."

His expressive eyebrows are at it again, and they tell her that he doesn't believe her. But she shakes her head again, and scrawls onto their parchment, "_Later_."

After everyone's turned in, she writes a note up to him.

_Hey._

_What's wrong?_

A long pause, then, _I wish that I could cuddle with you._

_I'd like that too, but._

_Yeah._

_We could, well._

_What's her name?_

_What?_

_Your girlfriend. Her name._

_… Acelin. She's French._

_Does she know?_

_Wait what?_

_It's 2027, relationships look different than they did in 1950. What you're suggesting, or what I'm gathering/hoping that you're suggesting, sharing your affection between multiple people, it's fine. But you should at least be honest about it with all your partners. She deserves to know. And I refuse to be your dirty little secret._

_…_

_I guess my pride is worth more to me than a cuddle. I'm obviously not asking you to choose between her and me, it's honestly probably better that you choose her, but look, it's hard to deny that we have an undeniable physical magnetism, which I would be happy to explore if. _

_If?_

_If conditions are right._

_Haha you make it sound like flying conditions. Are there thunderstorms on the horizon?_

_Good night, Scorpius._

_Good night, Rose._

Then, from him again, _I'm sorry._

* * *

This one is dedicated to C. You make me feel 15 again.


End file.
